but the minuscule amount of credibility you might have had disappeared when I realised a german was lecturing me on international co-operation and good relations. You might have forgotten the events of the 20th Century, and your country may well be taking advantage of the chaos they caused, but don't for one minute think that everyone has forgotten. Fortunately you can't erase history and if you actually understood anything about history you'd understand that's where all the important lessons are. One important lesson is to beware any treaties or agreements written by Germans because history tells that generally they aren't worth the paper they're written on.

Umm, the Germans have been fastidious about honoring agreements and are model citizens with an enviable track record of good economic management, with the one notable exception of the years when Helmut Kohl went over the 3% budget deficit during the unification years with East Germany. In general the Germans have been shocked to discover the extent to which most of the rest of the EU, especially the Mediterranean countries and France and Ireland have not been honoring EU and Euro zone agreements and have been playing fast and loose with the Euro since adopting it. Germans are rightfully outraged.

And therein lies the problem.

The EU only works if everyone abides by the rules. The UK entered late, and not on good terms, but even then the various "balances" such as the CAP were set up to favour some countries over others. We redressed the balance somewhat by negotiating a rebate, but we are still a net contributor, and a large one.

On the whole though, I don't have and issue with that. The benefits outweigh the cost, and the cost in total GDP terms are not that great. Removal of trade barriers reduced overheads for manufacturing industries exporting and importing from the EU, as did common product standards (can you imagine what it was like when EVERY country had it's own type approval laws) and travel across Europe is much easier.

Moreover, most of the companies I work for have branches all over the EU, and I work primarily in mainland Europe. There are many British expats working all over Europe, doing everything from running IT companies to building networks and writing software (while the UK companies are busy outsourcing the work to India).

And all the BS in the Daily Mail about EU regulation was mostly lies. In fact EU regulation in many cases is much simpler and less complex than the contorted UK regulations it replaced (or "enhanced" by the bureaucrats in Whitehall to make it just as bad). And God knows we messed up enough over BSE, foot and mouth and many other issues without any help from Europe.

Even now, much of British manufacturing would struggle if we pulled out of the EU. Not only are many companies working in cooperation with European industries (supplying parts and assemblies for Airbus, VW, Peugeot and many defence contracts) but other far east manufacturers are based in the UK purely because of it's membership.

To pull out of the EU would be a nightmare for all these businesses. You could kiss goodbye to what's left of British manufacturing.

In terms of immigration, EU immigration so far has been a major success on the whole. Most of the East Europeans working here are educated, paying tax, and if they send money home this is a far better way to regenerate Poland or Hungary than bail-outs and grants. You could say the same about the millions of Irish living in the UK, and London is now the 6th largest French city in the world, and none of them are on the dole (they'd get a lot better deal in France).

This outweighs the cost of the "cheats" by an order of magnitude.

Also, many of them return home when they have saved up enough to start a business and save the NHS from having to cope with their old age. Medical care elsewhere in the EU is as least as good as the UKs, and many of them still go home for major operations or dentistry.

Yes, a few screw the system but far more do not.

In fact the worst immigration issue we have regarding benefit and health tourism has nothing to do with the EU. The fact is our immigration laws are a soft touch - we'd do better with Shengen. Our completely messed up immigration policy has NOTHING to do with the EU, it was a self-inflicted nonsense dreamed up by the Labour government and then mishandled to a breath taking extent. So much for sovereignty!

And before you start on the EU human rights bill, it was substantially drafted by the British. Chickens roosting comfortably there, eh.

The real issues with the EU only really started with the Euro. It was poorly implemented, the rules for initial entry were too lax. Countries with a very poor record of balancing budgets were allowed entry and lent money by other EU banks (including ours) and are now defaulting on the payments. To make the Euro work would REQUIRE closer integration. It is a nonsense to have a common currency and no central bank regulator, which the Germans have had to step up to.

But out of the 27 European countries, 10 are not part of the Euro. It won't save our banks (many of which are now owned by the taxpayer) but I can't see a rush by these 10 countries to join any time soon. This would more or less force Brussels to consider a two tier system, one economic but retaining currency, legal and some financial controls, and one fully integrated into the EU banking system and fully regulated. This would actually make economic cooperation across Europe easier and, for those that want it, political integration too.

I don't feel bad about being "second tier", it's in effect the best of all worlds for us, but a wholesale withdrawal from the EU would me a nightmare for everyone except the super-rich, whose investments are all outside the EU (and who are pouring money into UKIP). They are our GOP, the super-rich that have no real interest in anyone else's prosperity, but don't mind resorting to simple minded Jingoistic nonsense to get the public onside to boost their property and offshore investments.

And on the sovereignty issue, it was not the EU that broke UK manufacturing, or turned us into an offshore branch for Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs et al. who don't pay a penny in corporation tax in the UK (they just assign all their losses into the UK arms). We did that entirely by ourselves. Just like we ended up unable to build our own trains, or invest in infrastructure, or retain our energy industry. You can thank Maggie and Tony for that.

So yes, we have immigration and health tourism issues, but entirely unrelated to the EU. Our manufacturing base declined, and our education system, again all self-imposed. Our banks failed, again self-inflicted.

Perhaps it would be better to emulate Germany instead of pointing fingers everywhere except where the blame lies for our own decline, namely us.

There is so much truth in what you are saying its difficult to know where to begin.

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Doctors are bad for your lifestyle.

Papillon and the likes of him do not have an EU problem. They have a psychological problem. Things would not get better for the UK if it left the EU. British politicians who make the EU responsible for domestic problems in order to detract from their own mistakes play with fire.

Maybe i´m wrong but he might suffer from an inferiority complex.

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What´s that noise?From one of the Canon Forums:'I just came back from my first holiday with the 5D II (I think my wife was there as well). '